If you’ve only ever seen Zhejiang as the West Lake and the canals of Hangzhou, Anji is the province’s green lung, and it surprised me the first time I drove in. This is a county under Huzhou, about 60 km northwest of Hangzhou, where the hills roll into what locals simply call the “bamboo sea” — tens of thousands of hectares of tall Phyllostachys bamboo that creak and rattle in the wind like a distant ocean. I’ve sent travelers here who wanted to escape the summer heat of the Yangtze delta, and most came back telling me the groves were quieter and stranger than any temple they had planned to see. This Anji travel guide is the briefing I give them: how to arrive, where to sleep, what to eat, and how to spend two unhurried days among the cane and the tea.
Anji’s reputation rests on two crops. The first is bamboo, which covers more than 60,000 hectares of the county and supports a whole economy of chopstick, flooring and furniture workshops you’ll pass on the roads between sights. The second is Anji white tea (Anji bai cha), a rare cultivar whose leaves flush pale green in early spring and make a sweet, low-tannin cup prized across China. The two together define the landscape: steep bamboo on every hillside, terraced tea fields in the valleys, and a slow rural rhythm that feels a world away from the high-speed rail hubs an hour south. If you want a fuller sense of the region, the Hangzhou travel guide is the natural anchor for any Zhejiang loop.
An Anji Bamboo Forest Visit: Where to Actually Go
For an Anji bamboo forest visit, the obvious first stop is the China Big Bamboo Sea (中国大竹海), the grove that doubled as the fighting ground in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A stone path climbs to a viewing tower where you stand above a solid green carpet of cane that runs to the horizon and, on a clear day, folds over the next ridge. Admission is around ¥58–80 depending on season. It’s popular, so come before 9:00 or after 15:00 to have the upper paths to yourself and to hear the stalks knock together in the wind without a tour-group commentary underneath.
A quieter alternative I prefer is the Bamboo Expo Garden (竹博园), on the edge of the county town, which combines a living collection of hundreds of bamboo species with a small museum on paper-making and a panda house — Anji keeps two giant pandas on loan. Tickets run ¥80–100. For hiking among the canes, the trails above Canglong Baipu (藏龙百瀑) waterfall combine bamboo shade with a string of drops — a good half-day if you want moving water rather than a static viewpoint. The hiking and trekking routes we recommend across China include a couple here if you want to extend the walk into a longer ridge day.
Anji White Tea Plantations and the Taste of Spring
Anji white tea plantations cluster around Xilong township (溪龙乡), north of the county seat, where low terraces are carpeted in the pale cultivar from late March to early April. The picking window is short — about three weeks — and the best leaves are the bud sets hand-plucked before the Qingming festival, when prices spike. You can walk the rows freely, and several family farms offer tastings and a simple lunch for the price of a pot. I’ve taken guests to a small operation near Huangpu village where the owner fries the leaves in a wok over a wood fire; the difference between that and a supermarket tin is the difference between fresh herbs and dried.
If tea is the point of your trip, time it to the spring flush and read our guide to China’s tea-growing regions and tasting routes before you book, because Anji is only one stop on a much longer leaf trail through Zhejiang and Fujian. Buy a bag of loose white tea from a roadside farm at ¥200–600 per 250 g depending on grade; the cheap stuff labelled “Anji bai cha” in town is drinkable but rarely the real early flush.
How to Get to Anji from Hangzhou
The practical answer to how to get to Anji from Hangzhou has improved a lot in the last few years. High-speed rail now reaches Anji station (安吉站) on the Shangqiu–Hefei–Hangzhou line, with services from Hangzhou East in roughly 40–50 minutes for ¥40–60, which has become my default recommendation because it drops you 20 km from the bamboo sights and a taxi finishes the run in 30 minutes for ¥60–90. The older option is the long-distance bus from Hangzhou’s north bus station (杭州汽车北站), with frequent coaches to the Anji county town taking about 1.5–2 hours for ¥30–45.
If you’re basing in Huzhou instead, the Huzhou travel guide covers the slower local buses that thread the lake towns to the north. From Shanghai, count on a 2.5–3 hour drive or a train to Hangzhou plus the connection above; Anji works best as a Hangzhou-side overnight rather than a standalone long-haul. Once in the county, local buses reach the major sights for ¥5–10, but a rental car or ride-hail is worth it — the plantations and waterfalls are spread across 40 km of hilly road and buses stop constantly.
Planning a bigger Zhejiang loop? Pair Anji with Moganshan’s hill retreats and you’ll have bamboo and cool air covered for a full week.
Things to Do in Anji Beyond the Bamboo
Things to do in Anji extend well past the groves. Jiangnan Tianchi (江南天池) is a reservoir built on top of the Tianhuangping pumped-storage power station, a curved lake at 800 m that photographs beautifully in winter and sits beside a small ski field — the only one in East China, open roughly December to February. The Moganshan travel guide makes a natural companion here, because both are hill stations built for the same delta heat. Yucun (余村) is the showcase “beautiful countryside” village where abandoned quarries became a green-tourism model; it’s almost too tidy, but the riverside walk and the old mine-turned-exhibit are genuinely interesting. For families, Hello Kitty Park (凯蒂猫家园) draws younger children with rides and costumed parades.
Food is rustic and good. Bamboo shoots (笋) appear in every form — braised, stir-fried with pork, or dried — and the local free-range chicken cooked with mountain yam is a standard hearty order. A dinner for two at a countryside restaurant runs ¥120–200. The county town has a night market where you can graze on grilled skewers and sticky-rice rolls for under ¥50 a head.
Best Time to Visit Anji
The best time to visit Anji is March to May for the tea flush and mild green hills, or September to November for cool, dry hiking and the autumn bamboo. April is the sweet spot if you want both the pale new tea and comfortable walking, though it’s also the busiest. Summer (July–August) is hot and humid at the valley floor — 32–36°C — but the high bamboo and Jiangnan Tianchi sit 5–8°C cooler, which is exactly why Hangzhou families flee here in August. Winter is quiet and cheap; the ski field runs roughly December to February. Avoid the plum-rain weeks of mid-June, when the paths get slick and the light goes flat.
Where to Stay and a Two-Day Plan
Accommodation ranges from county-town business hotels (¥250–450) to hillside guesthouses and the kind of rural stays our China farm-stay guide describes, where you sleep above a tea farm for ¥400–800 and wake to mist on the cane. I usually book the guesthouse near Xilong so the morning picking walk is a few steps from the door, and so the dawn light hits the terraces before the road fills with tour buses.
A workable two-day Anji plan: Day 1, arrive from Hangzhou before noon, lunch on bamboo shoots, then the China Big Bamboo Sea in the late-afternoon light; sleep in the hills. Day 2, a 9:00 walk through the Xilong tea rows with a wok-fried tasting, lunch at the farm, then Canglong Baipu waterfalls or Jiangnan Tianchi depending on season, and a coach or train back to Hangzhou by early evening. It’s a slow trip by design — Anji rewards people who stop moving. Realistic daily spend for two: ¥200–400 transport, ¥200–400 lodging, ¥250–400 food and tickets.
For background, the county’s profile and ecology are summarized on Wikipedia, useful if you want the wider Zhejiang context before you go. If you’re building a delta itinerary, anchor it on Hangzhou and use Anji as the green excursion to its northwest — three days of city and cane is a classic combination.
Want train and bus times that actually connect Hangzhou, Huzhou and the bamboo sights into one smooth trip? Tell us your dates and we’ll lay it out.
Prefer a private car with a local driver for the spread-out plantations and waterfalls? We can arrange one with an English-speaking guide.